Interview: Bobby Shmurda Talks with GQ In Exclusively From Jail
It has been more than a year since rapper Bobby Shmurda has been in jail over being indicted on a slew of charges involving guns, drugs and murder. He is now heading to trial in September in an attempt to clear his name. Two of his GS9 crew members have already been sentenced to 53 and 98 years in prison.
Bobby Shmurda recently sat down for an exclusive interview with GQ’s Scott Eden from behind bars. He spoke with them in March, in an interview room at the Rockland County Correctional Center, 40 miles north of New York City. Bobby’s been busy in jail working on a fictional story about the experience he’s been through. But, the interview itself uncovers some key facts from Bobby’s side of the story. One in particular is a gun and drug charge but no drugs were ever seized. Take a look at some parts of the interview below and ready the full article over at GQ.
On What Motivated him To Start Rapping:
Chewy (Bobby Shmurda) wanted some weed. He was headed up to his friend Pluto’s place. Pluto was the local marijuana vendor in this part of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Chewy reached the landing of Pluto’s apartment, and Chewy watched as one of the gunmen wheeled in surprise and fired. “They shot him right in front of my face,” Chewy recalls now. “When they shot him, I turned my head to the wall, like: I don’t know nothin’, I ain’t see nothin’.
As we worked through the chronology of his life so far, he came to the tale of Pluto’s murder. This, he said, was the moment he decided to make a serious attempt at a career he’d always fantasized about but had done next to nothing to make real: “I felt like I survived for a reason.”
On Being Targeted By the NYPD:
Another time, Wilson and others were with Pollard outside another venue when a group of N.Y.P.D. officers confronted them. They were pulled from their cars and thrown to the ground. Ball, who had fallen asleep on the ride to the venue, says, “I woke up to the barrel of a gun in my face.” According to Wilson, an officer asked him how much money Pollard was making.
There were the circumstances, for example, surrounding one of Pollard’s two illegal-gun-possession charges. On the afternoon of June 3, 2014—just as the “Hot Nigga” video was starting to blow up—Pollard was hanging out at his girlfriend’s place with a couple of friends. Per the police version of events, two officers, executing a search warrant with possible drug use as the probable cause, found the door open. They could see Pollard inside, a firearm in one hand and a joint in the other. The police then took all four people in the apartment into custody. According to prosecutors, Pollard tried to explain that the gun was just a prop for a music video. “At the time, the officers did not know of Mr. Pollard’s budding fame,” Nigel Farinha, one of the assistant district attorneys prosecuting Shmurda’s case, said at a hearing earlier this year, “and had no idea what he was talking about.”
Pollard’s version differs. He says the cops came in and lined everyone up against a wall. They then searched the apartment, found a gun, and told Pollard they’d be charging him with illegally possessing it. The four kids were put into the back of a paddy wagon and held there, Pollard says, “for, like, eight hours” before arriving at the precinct for booking. Pollard says none of his DNA was found on the gun. And, according to court documents, Pollard’s lawyer plans to argue that the search warrant was issued under false pretenses.
There were other oddities. For a case against a purported drug gang, there was a curious lack of drugs. No undercover sting had interrupted a GS9 drug transaction. No illicit profits had been sought in forfeiture proceedings. The press release that accompanied the arrest in December 2014 mentioned “proceeds” and “narcotics packaging.” And yet, defense lawyers say, nothing—no narcotics inventory, no packaging, no cash—has yet been shared by prosecutors during pre-trial discovery. (The government must share with the defense any evidence it will present. The prosecution declined to comment on specifics, citing the ongoing trial.) So far, the main evidence of drug sales appears to be the recorded phone calls and the snippets of dialogue about dealing “crills” and “twork.”